Deacon gave a snort of laughter. "It's one of the world's great masterpieces, Terry."
"It weren't as good as Billy's. I mean look at the legs. They're all mixed up, so Billy sorted them. He gave the bloke brown legs and the woman blue legs."
With a muffled guffaw, Deacon lowered his forehead to the table. He reached surreptitiously for a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly before sitting up again. "Remind me to show you the original one day," he said a little unsteadily. "It's in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and I'm not as convinced as you that the legs need-er-sorting." He took a pull at his beer can. "Tell me how Billy managed to do these paintings if he couldn't see properly."
"He could see to draw-I mean he were drawing every night on bits of paper-and, anyway, he made his pavement pictures really big. It were only reading that gave him a headache."
"What about the writing that you said he put at the bottom of the picture?''
"He did it big like the painting, otherwise people wouldn't have noticed it."
"How do you know what it said if you can't read?"
"Billy learnt it to me so I could write it myself." He pulled Deacon's notebook and pencil towards him and carefully formed the words across the page: "blessed are the poor.
"If you can do that," said Deacon matter-of-factly, "you can learn to read in two days." He took up one of the letters and spread it carefully on the table in front of him.
Cadogan Square
April 4th
Darling,
Thank you for your beautiful letter, but how I wish you could enjoy the here and now and forget the future. Of course I am flattered that you want the world to know you love me, but isn't what we have more perfect because it is a secret? You say "your glass shall not persuade you you are old, so long as youth and I are of one date," but, my darling, Shakespeare never named his love because he knew how cruel the world could be. Do you want me pilloried as a calculating bitch who set out to seduce any man who could offer her security? For that is what will happen if you insist on acknowledging me publicly. I adore you with all my heart but my heart will break if you ever stop loving me because of what people say. Please, please let's leave things the way they are. Your loving, V.
Deacon unfolded the second letter and placed it beside the first. It was written in the same hand.
Paris
Friday
Darling,
Don't think me mad but I am so afraid of dying. I have nightmares sometimes where I float in black space beyond the reach of anyone's love. Is that what hell is, do you think? Forever to know that love exists while forever condemned to exist without it? If so, it will be my punishment for the happiness I've had with you. I can't help thinking it's wrong for one person to love another so much that she can't bear to be apart from him. Please, please don't stay away any longer than is necessary. Life isn't life without you. V.
"Did Billy read these to you, Terry?"
The boy shook his head.
"They're love letters. Rather beautiful love letters in fact. Do you want to hear them?" He took Terry's shrug for assent and read the words aloud. He waited for a reaction when he'd finished, but didn't get one. "Did you ever hear him talking about someone whose name began with ' V ?" he asked then. "It sounds as if she was a lot younger than he was."
The boy didn't answer immediately. "Whoever she is, I bet she's dead," he said. "Billy told me once that hell was being left alone forever and not being able to do nothing about it, and then he started to cry. He said it always made him cry to think of someone being that lonely, but I guess he was really crying for this lady. That's sad, isn't it?"
"Yes,'' said Deacon slowly, "but I wonder why he thought she was in hell." He read through the letters again but found nothing to account for Billy's certainty about V's fate.
"He reckoned he'd go to hell. He kind of looked forward to it in a funny sort of way. He said he deserved all the punishment the gods could throw at him."
"Because he was a murderer?"
"I guess so. He went on and on about life being a holy gift. It used to drive Tom up the wall. He'd say-"he fell into a fair imitation of Tom's cockney accent-" 'If it's so effin' 'oly, what the fuck are we doing livin' in this soddin' 'ell of a cesspit?' And Billy'd say-" Terry now adopted a classier tone-" 'You are here by choice because your gift included free will. Decide now whether you seek to bring the gods' anger upon your heads. If the answer's no, then choose a wiser course.' "
Deacon chuckled. "Is that what he actually said?"
"Sure. I used to say it for him sometimes when he was too pissed to say it himself." He returned to his mimicking of Billy's voice. " 'You are here by choice because your gift included free will.' Blah-blah-blah. He were a bit of a pillock really, couldn't see when he was annoying people. Or if he did, he didn't care. Then he'd get rat-arsed and start yelling, and that was worse because we couldn't understand what he was on about."
Deacon fetched another two beer cans from the fridge, and chucked the empties into the bin. "Do you remember him saying anything about repentance?'' he asked, propping himself against the kitchen worktop.
"Is that the same as repent?"
"Yes."
"He used to shout that a lot. 'Repent! Repent! Repent! The hour is later than you think!' He did it that time he took all his clothes off in the middle of the fucking winter. 'Repent! Repent! Repent!' he kept screaming."
"Do you know what repentance is?"
"Yeah. Saying sorry."
Deacon nodded. "Then why didn't Billy follow his own advice and say sorry for this murder. He'd have been looking to heaven then instead of hell." Except that he'd told the psychiatrist his own redemption didn't interest him...
Terry pondered this for some time. "I get what you're saying," he declared finally, "but, see, I never thought about it before. The trouble with Billy was he was-well-noisy most of the time, and it did your head in to listen to him. And he only spoke about the murder once, when he were really worked up about something." His eyes screwed in concentrated reflection. "In any case, he stuck his hand in the fire straight afterwards and wouldn't take it out till we all pulled him off of it, so I guess no one thought to ask why he didn't repent himself." He shrugged. "I expect it's quite simple. I expect it was his fault his lady went to hell, so he felt he ought to go there, too. Poor bitch."
Deacon remembered his suspicions the first time he heard this story, when it was obvious to him that Terry was relating an incident that the other men at the warehouse knew nothing about. They had recalled the hand in the fire, but not the revelations of murder. "Or maybe there was nothing to repent," he suggested. "Another way to go to hell is to destroy the gods' gift of life by killing yourself. For centuries, suicides were buried in wasteland to demonstrate that they had put themselves beyond the reach of God's mercy. Isn't that the path Billy was taking?"
"You asked me that one already, and I already told you, Billy never tried to kill himself."
"He starved himself to death."
"Nah. He just forgot to eat. That's different, that is. He were too drunk most of the time to know what he was doing."
Deacon thought back. "You said he strangled someone because the gods had written it in his fate. Were those the actual words he used?"
"I can't remember."